by M S C Barnes
dustpan and brush, sweeping the pieces of pottery up and dropping them with a crash into an empty box.
The class never did settle down. Little tittering outbursts and whispers punctuated the remaining minutes of the lesson.
The clanging bell, signalling lunchtime, was the most musical thing Seb had heard. Head hanging, he stood.
Zach clapped him on the back and in a booming voice said, “Thanks for the entertainment, mortal!”
In the back of his mind Seb managed to feel relieved that the performance had not alienated his only friend. One thing about Zach, his loyalty was unquestionable.
Lunch brought more humiliation. Other than the odd snigger, his classmates, with the exception of Zach, made no move to speak to him or associate with him in any way. He did, however, receive plenty of attention from the hundreds of other students queuing for lunch. The wet patch across his crotch and bottom needed no explanation: the Year Nine-er had peed his pants – well that was the chat anyway, and short of standing on a tabletop and announcing that it was just water, how could he stop the story spreading?
By the end of lunch Seb was known throughout the school as the boy who had stepped in The Lake and peed himself on his second day. Having begun the morning resenting Zach’s presence he now clung to him for security, relieved that Zach seemed unconcerned at the wide berth they were being given by all other pupils at the school.
The Mark
Huddled in the back of the car on the way home, Seb was quiet. Scarlet, however, was not. She recounted The Lake story in vivid detail and described her embarrassment at people believing she was twin sister to the infamous pant-wetting Year Nine-er. She bigged-up her role in protecting him and escorting him to his class line and played down her evasive tactics in the playground at lunchtime, when Seb and Zach had approached her and her girlfriends, looking for a wider circle to be with, and she had pretended not to see them, disappearing into some secluded corner to avoid them.
Seb’s mind retreated from the uncomfortable storytelling and returned to the curious mark he had seen on his desk, before the incident with the water bottle. The school desks were mostly battered old wooden items with scrapes and scratches and years’ worth of scribblings, some accidental, many intentional as the teachers lost the anti-graffiti battle. The mark Seb had noted was obviously intentional. Scratched in black ink, the line pressed so heavily into the wood surface it scored an indentation. It was the outline of a leaf. That in itself wasn’t so exceptional; the school was in the middle of a spread of ancient woodland which would provide subconscious inspiration for students gazing out of the window instead of engaging in their lessons.
This particular leaf, however, had drawn Seb’s attention because right in the middle of it was a single upright line, from the left of which stretched two parallel horizontal lines. It was only about half an inch long, but was precise and clear.
Seb turned his left hand over and stared at his palm. He placed his fingernail on the mark which had been present on his skin since birth and traced along the same design – two horizontal lines, joining a single upright line formed by an overabundance of pigmentation, the doctors had told his mother, and spread in an unusually precise network of lines, as opposed to the usual misshapen blobs that typify birthmarks. He gazed at the area surrounding this criss-cross of lines which was tinted darker than the pale skin on the rest of his hand. This patch of tinted skin undulated and curved, giving the appearance of an oak leaf. The whole birthmark was no more than an inch long.
Seb wondered if he should mention the table-marking to his mother and sister. Scarlet was fascinated by Seb’s birthmark. He decided mentioning it would just open up the whole water-spilling, pot-smashing, lip-splitting incident again and it was best to leave Scarlet to ramble on about her exciting day. He slumped back in his seat and remained quiet for the journey and throughout the evening, sloping off to bed early, sad and disappointed at the disastrous day.
His dreams that night found him wandering in an endless, dark wood. He stumbled into a stream. His shiny new school shoes were soaked; they swelled in size and fell away from his feet. He clambered up the bank and climbed over the ridge at the top. Stepping down into another rivulet he tripped and fell to a sitting position in the water. As the icy liquid soaked into his trousers he looked up in the gloom and saw the glint of a golden thread stretching from a large tree behind him and disappearing into a dark void on the opposite bank. He reached and grabbed the thread and heard a creaking and groaning sound as he used the fine cord to pull himself up. The thread, which had been taut, bent and the massive trunk of an oak tree fell forward out of the dark void towards the stream. As it crashed to the ground it splintered into millions of pieces of pottery. Seb, pelted with the shards of ceramic bark, put his hands up to protect his face and a fine sliver skimmed across his left palm. He felt a searing pain and woke with a start to find himself at the bottom of his bed, his left arm hanging down, illuminated by a beam of moonlight that sliced through a small gap in the curtains.
Everything was quiet except from the bed below where his brother, The Taz, was gently snuffling.
Seb’s left hand hurt and he sat up, holding his palm towards the beam of moonlight to get a better look. Expecting to see a cut or bruising, it was smarting so much his breath caught in his throat as his eyes focused. The lines in the centre of his birthmark looked like they had grown, expanding right to the edges of the leaf shape and they looked lighter than the dark brown he was used to. They seemed to have a hue; a tint he couldn’t make out. The moonlight drained the colour from everything around him. He ran his fingertip over the lines and noticed a softness, a slight furry texture.
Seb tiptoed to the bathroom. Turning on the light he held his hand up and opened his fingers. When he saw the network of lines and the birthmark, the loud groan he made echoed around the room.
He wasn’t wrong. The lines had doubled in size and now they were green. They stretched from the top of the surrounding pigmented leaf shape to the bottom, like a straight spine with veins running from it.
Staring intently at the mark he practically jumped out of his skin as a hand grabbed his left arm. He spun round and pulled away, glancing over his shoulder. Scarlet’s angry face, framed by a mass of tousled hair, loomed towards him. She hissed in a whisper, “What the heck are you doing?”
Seb hissed a Shh! back.
“I am shushing! What are you doing?”
Seb’s instinct was to lie, but he was now upset and worried and needed a friend. Maybe it was the anxiety in his eyes but Scarlet’s face softened.
“What is it? D’you have a bad dream? What’s wrong?”
Seb thrust his palm up about a foot away from her nose. He watched her expression as her eyes focused on the mark. The frown lifted, then the eyebrows, her mouth opened, her eyes widened and she stifled a little choke.
Scarlet’s first instinct was to call their mum but Seb refused to let her. She wanted to know why not; maybe Seb’s birthmark was infected. It had, after all, gone green. Seb became defensive, arguing it wasn’t infected; it seemed perfectly healthy. The pain had gone; it was just that the network of lines was now green instead of dark brown. It really didn’t matter – did it?
Scarlet lifted his hand to her nose and sniffed it.
Seb pulled it away. “What are you doing?”
“Well, shouldn’t it smell if it’s infected? You know, gangrene.” She screwed her nose up.
Seb’s heart lurched. “Well? Does it? Does it smell?”
Scarlet shoved his arm away. “Nope. Well, no more than stinky boys normally smell.” She smiled at him.
They spent the next few hours chatting, discussing whether it was normal for birthmarks to change, what the cause could be, and whether there was a hidden reason or meaning.
Sitting in the bright, artificial light of the bathroom with the sky outside lightening through the frosted glass window, Seb’s fears subsided. It seemed perfec
tly normal that the lines in his birthmark should change and grow. Wasn’t that part of growing up anyway? He was still adamant he didn’t want to let their mum know; she would fuss and take him to the doctor and make a huge deal out of it. Seb cited The Lake incident and the pant-wetting story as all-too-recent examples of unwanted fame and attention. Scarlet giggled and shrugged, letting him have his way. She was thrilled to be in on a secret.
Teasing
On waking, their mum was surprised to find Seb and Scarlet already dressed and downstairs having breakfast. Smiling, she busied herself with getting The Taz ready.
Seb and Scarlet had nicknamed their baby brother ‘The Taz’ after watching a cartoon of the Tasmanian Devil as he wreaked havoc in Daffy Duck’s life and decided that their brother was a child-sized version of this whirlwind character. He was now spinning madly on his bar stool, giggling.
Chomping noisily on her Crunchy Nut cornflakes, Scarlet turned and gave Seb a wink when she saw he was wearing his fingerless gloves with his jumper sleeves pulled down to his knuckles. That had been her suggestion to hide the birthmark.
During the drive to school Scarlet sat in the back next to Seb. In a whisper she told him he should show his hand to her friends and swear them to secrecy. Seb hardly paid any attention. He gazed out at the passing scenery.